the Mysteries of asound.conf

["Martin G. McCormick" <martin@server1.shellworld.net>]

	If one searches for debian+multiple+sound+cards, there
is a wilderness of somewhat confusing discussions and examples
as to how to configure asound.conf to insure that each card
comes up in the same order. I have two older Dells, each with
the stock CS423X sound chip on the mother board and a SB16-type
sound card. One uses an EMU10k1 driver and the other uses an
EMU8000. All seem to work and would work a lot better if they
always came up in the same order.
	One school of thought tells us to put a line in
/etc/asound.conf that looks something like
options snd slots=,snd-Emu8000

	The , is supposed to cause the Emu8000 (SB) card to
always b C1 so that the CS423X always becomes c0. I then
discovered that I did not have ecasound installed which appears
to be what gives you asound so I installed it and immediately
got that long message which is the error output of the parser
that translates in to a sort of check-engine light stating "This
is broken. You figure it out."
	After searching for the error, I found what appears to
be a newer way to set things in asound.conf:
pcm.!default {
        type hw
        card 0
}

ctl.!default {
        type hw
        card 0
}
	The syntax gods love this and aplay -l reports the cards
in the desired order but they were in the desired order to start
with so I am wondering if this actually does anything.
	When booting the system from a cold boot, the CS423X
usually comes up as card 0 and the SB is Card 1.
A warm boot or a cold boot during the New Moon will flip the
order and the SB is on bottom, so to speak.
	If that asound.conf example does somehow force the same
order each time, I am fine with that but it intuitively looks
like that whatever rings in first is C0 today.
	Since the two sound cards are different in every way but
their function, anything that differentiates one from the other
should cause a predictable result every time.
	Thanks.
Martin McCormick